Mealtimes are an important part of hospital treatment

The Hospital Caterers Association (HCA) is heralding its first National Protected Mealtimes Day, held last month, as a success.

The day was organised by the HCA to highlight how mealtimes could be free from interruption and how this would improve recovery times for patients. The HCA believes patients should have three meals a day, which are interruption-free and allow them to eat in comfort.

Ian Robinson, chairman of the HCA's general purposes committee, said that about 340 hospitals took part in the day on 4 March. This was slightly better than the HCA expected - it had predicted that 15% of the country's 1,900 acute and non-acute hospitals would take part.

The HCA sent hospital trusts a guide on how to set up protected mealtimes in hospitals. "The hospitals that tried it liked it, and the patients liked it - now we want to make it happen every day. We want to have more nurses on board as it has to be a ward-based function, and we want to get doctors on board, too," said Robinson.

He added that it was too early to state how many hospitals had adopted the scheme. "We've had really good feedback and I'm expecting that by April 2005 a high number of hospitals will be protecting mealtimes for patients," he said.

"There's a serious side to this - patients who have an environment conducive to eat, eat well, and well-nourished patients recover quicker and go home quicker, which would save the health service money."

Simon Williams, director of policy at the Patient Association, said that in the past, mealtimes were seen as an interruption to a patient's treatment, but now they were very much part of the treatment.

"Eating is an integral part of treatment, and it's important for patients to have uninterrupted time to eat and enjoy meals," he added.

Williams will address the HCA's 51st annual conference in Brighton on 30 April on how to improve patient satisfaction from mealtimes.

Total number of outlets and meals in the cost catering sector

	2003		2002
	Outlets	Meals (m)	Outlets	Meals (m)
Health and welfare (including local authorities)	34,062	1,424	32,319	1,116

*Source: Horizons//Foodservice Intelligence* Horizons' Peter Backman is holding a key club workshop on 28 April, focusing on hospital catering. John Hughes, of Nottingham Trent NHS Trust, will provide the feature presentation on "What's hot and what's not". The workshop is being held at Durdent Court, Denham, Buckinghamshire. Contact Horizons on 020 8349 0162. Number of outlets and meals served by contract caterers, 2003 (2002)

Healthcare		Outlets	Meals served (m)
NHS and trust hospitals	465	(465)	206 (215)
Private hospitals	22	(51)	2 (4)
Private and state nursing homes	395	(347)	24 (18)
Total	882	(863) 4.7\* (4.5\*)	232 (237) 14\*\* (14.9\*\*)

\* Percentage of outlets in healthcare market using contract caterers \*\* Percentage of meals in healthcare served by contract caterers Number of contracts in which food and service management companies have invested, 2003 (2002)

	£0-25k	£26-£50k	£51-£100k	£101-£500k
Healthcare	6 (13)	1 (8)	5 (1)	2 (4)